Book Club Defense Mechanisms

I can’t speak from experience on this. I’ve never joined a book club. Actually, I’m so reluctant to join any club that if someone were to found The Club Of Jim Snowdens With Dark, Curly Hair Who Live In A Third Floor Apartment With A Woman Named Venice Three Blocks South of Main Street In Bellevue, WA, I’d avoid it out of concern it could become both too crowded and too cliquey.

Still, I take it that Zane Shelter can speak from experience, and he’s provided a glossary of Book Club Defense Mechanisms. A sample:

repression. A defense mechanism whereby you place a sticky note on the novel’s cover with a phrase akin to “Read by the 19th.” The novel is then carefully set on the passenger seat of your car where it will surely be read over lunch. It is left there for several days, displaced to the floor by a passenger who asks how it is — this being the last time you acknowledge the novel’s existence aloud — then it is further pushed into the unconscious by a scarf, gloves, newspaper, several fast food bags, and other much more enticing reads.

Read the rest. It’ll help you stop overthinking the situation in the Ukraine.